Now that MobileMe is on the way out, Hints reader vincent860524 wanted to be prepared for its eventual demise. Specifically, he wanted to figure out an alternative way to publish his iWeb projects online. His solution: Store his sites on Dropbox ().

To implement his workaround, open your iWeb project and click on the project's name in the sidebar to get to the Site Publishing Settings. In the Publish To dropdown menu, select Local Folder. Now click on the Publish Site button in iWeb's bottom toolbar. The program will prompt you to choose your local folder. Here's the trick: Choose your Dropbox's Public folder—or, more likely, a subfolder within it that you create just for this site.

Once Dropbox finishes syncing your saved files, go to the Dropbox website and log in. Navigate to your newly-created folder and find the index.html file that iWeb created in it. Click on the blue triangle to the right of the filename, and then choose the Copy Public Link option. You can copy the full URL (which will begin http://dl.dropbox.com/u/), or click on Shorten Link to get a smaller one (which will begin http://db.tt/).

If anyone plugs that public URL into a browser, Dropbox will display your website. That URL won't be as pretty as your old MobileMe address. But you'll still have a free way to keep your site online.

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